LOL. That pic is from one of my unit's test programs not long before I was transferred in. The first UAV guided weapons launch success. When the Predator launched its firdt Hellfire, I had to remind the shimy AF Lt PAO that what she wrote up as a 'first time' was the first operational use, but not allbtogether that new. And now the world has forgotten we used to have enlisted UAV controllers right up to the early 1990s. History in America is a black hole whereby we constantly relearn old lessons.

Defense company Kratos has announced that it will show two low-cost combat drones at the Paris Air Show next week, offering an insight as to what military conflicts might look like in the foreseeable future – a manned combat jet leading dozens of 1,000 km/h lethally-armed unmanned companions.

The Kratos XQ-222 Valkyrie and UTAP-22 Mako drones offer fighter-like performance at between US$2 and $3 million apiece, compared with $100 million for each manned fighter. The Valkrie and Mako will initially function as wingmen to manned aircraft in combat, but they are the most likely key component of the first military unmanned combat swarms...

Attritable doesn't quite mean disposable, but expendable if necessary. Hence the drones might be used to shield the manned aircraft nominally controlling the swarm, and take risks that manned planes and very expensive Unmanned Systems cannot...

The smaller Mako with its 10-ft (3-m) wingspan is the faster of the two at 0.91 Mach (1,125 km/h), while the 22-ft (6.7-m)-wingspan Valkyrie is slightly slower at 0.85 Mach (1,050 km/h). Both drones can operate independently in combat and both have considerable range, with the Mako capable of flying to 50,000 ft and covering 1,400 naut mi (2,600 km) and the XQ-222 Valkyrie (below) capable of 45,000 ft and 1,850 naut mi (3,425 km)."If you team up a bunch of these aircraft with an F-35 or an F-22, or some of our surveillance assets, you'd basically be able to cover more space at a lower cost point," Bill Baron of the United States Air Force Research Laboratories told the Dayton Daily News last month. "In a lot of cases, we don't have enough airplanes and as you look to the future, most likely our fleet sizes are going to continue to be more limited so this is a way to provide a force multiplier."